R Chandra at PCORI

June 2021

1. Please don't make changes to the source of an article which make no difference to how the article is displayed. Doing so serves no useful purpose, and makes it harder to find genuine changes in the article history.
2. If you are connected to someone or something you have written about (a few examples are writing about yourself, your business, your band, a member of your family, your client) then you should be aware that Wikipedia's conflict of interest guideline discourages you from writing about that subject. The main reason for that is that experience over the years indicates that editors with such a connection to a subject they are writing about are likely to find it very difficult, or even impossible, to stand back from their writing and see how it will look from the detached perspective of an outsider, so that they are likely to write in ways that look promotional to others, even if they sincerely think they are writing in a neutral way. Also, if your editing forms all or part of work for which you are paid, whether as an employee, as a contractor, or in any other capacity, the Wikimedia Foundation's terms of use require you to state who is paying you, and what your connection to them is. (To avoid the possibility of a surprisingly common misunderstanding, editing is part of paid work if it is done as part of normal employment or as part of a work to a contract, whether or not a specific payment earmarked for editing Wikipedia is made.)
3. Your user name indicates that your account represents a business or other organisation, but Wikipedia policy requires an account to be for one person acting in an individual capacity. You shouldtherefore not continue to edit under your current username. However, a username such as "J Smith at PCORI" would be perfectly acceptable, and would have the advantage of both providing transparency about your connection to the organisation and also showing that the account is an individual one. JBW (talk) 13:31, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

Undisclosed paid editing

Hello R Chandra at PCORI. The nature of your edits, such as the one you made to Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, gives the impression you have an undisclosed financial stake in promoting a topic, but you have not complied with Wikipedia's mandatory paid editing disclosure requirements. Paid advocacy is a category of conflict of interest (COI) editing that involves being compensated by a person, group, company or organization to use Wikipedia to promote their interests. Undisclosed paid advocacy is prohibited by our policies on neutral point of view and what Wikipedia is not, and is an especially serious type of COI; the Wikimedia Foundation regards it as a "black hat" practice akin to black-hat search-engine optimization.

Paid advocates are very strongly discouraged from direct article editing, and should instead propose changes on the talk page of the article in question if an article exists. If the article does not exist, paid advocates are extremely strongly discouraged from attempting to write an article at all. At best, any proposed article creation should be submitted through the articles for creation process, rather than directly.

Regardless, if you are receiving or expect to receive compensation for your edits, broadly construed, you are required by the Wikimedia Terms of Use to disclose your employer, client and affiliation. You can post such a mandatory disclosure to your user page at User:R Chandra at PCORI. The template {{Paid}} can be used for this purpose – e.g. in the form: {{paid|user=R Chandra at PCORI|employer=InsertName|client=InsertName}}. If I am mistaken – you are not being directly or indirectly compensated for your edits – please state that in response to this message. Otherwise, please provide the required disclosure. In either case, do not edit further until you answer this message. --Drm310 🍁 (talk) 15:33, 18 June 2021 (UTC)